


Did You Think That You Were Homeward Bound?

by toomuchgawking



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 03:57:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1414207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchgawking/pseuds/toomuchgawking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha's relationship with the truth, Sam's relationship with the fight, and Steve and Bucky's relationship with each other.</p>
<p>Four character sketches written in reaction to Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Natalia Alianovna Romanova

The Red Room and its operatives have always had an extremely ambivalent relationship with the truth.

Natasha’s never let go of it, and she’s attached herself to people who understand it. It’s not hard, after all, in the intelligence agency when the only things more important than the things people record are the things they don’t. Files have turned electronic, both easier to guard and easier to trace, and harder to get rid of. But Natalia Alianovna Romanova adapts, like she always has. It might be exhausting, living with back up plans built into contingencies, safe houses and fall out shelters in a network that no one knows all of but her, but it’s worth it. Maybe her web isn’t as far-reaching as Nick Fury’s, but it’s still hers and she can sit in the centre and wait for the vibrations to come.

That, oddly enough, is what turns an uneasy truce of a working relationship into something close to trust. She can’t call it that exactly, because neither of them are that kind of person, but it’s something they both understand. Because he knows why when Natalia escaped the Red Room she destroyed as many files as she could, and why is was Natasha that joined SHIELD instead. He knows why ‘Black Widow was a rank, not an alias’ is both the truth and a misdirection, and why the fewer people who know the better. So, her SHIELD file has her real last name, and a birthdate of 1984, but, as Fury likes to say, SHIELD technically still knows because _he_ does. Not that he says it in that many words. There's a relationship that comes with knowing each others secrets, with knowing that the dirty work needs to be done, and knowing you'll both do it.

But secrets aren’t shields against bullets through the chest, and the ballistics results are just another reason to start enacting contingency plans, to throw up walls and decide if it’s time to sneak further in or to get out completely. She’d be lying if she said Steve’s faith hadn’t felt good, and as naïve as she’s always thought it was, losing it stings. But she hasn’t made up her mind, so when he asks about the Winter Soldier she does what she always does. She tells him the truth, and shows him one of the scars, and acts like it’s the whole story instead of a fragment.

And then she goes with him, because Fury gave him the drive, and that has to mean something. And he asked her to come, and that has to mean something too.

Together they bring the world crashing down, and she lets herself be held accountable. The front page of every newspaper in the world is no place for a spy, but she’s been places more dangerous before.

Steve calls her a friend readily, and maybe it doesn’t feel exactly right but it could. There’s time to figure that out, so when Fury goes to his ground, she goes to her own. It could be time for Natasha to go the same way Natalia did, or maybe it’s just a new corner. But she has her web, and her doubts, and her history, and out of that she’s going to build a future.


	2. Sam Wilson

Washington D.C. is home for a lot of reasons. Far away from the fight, but not far away from the war. Sam runs in the morning to keep himself ready for a battle that he doesn’t plan on rejoining and he talks about leaving the baggage behind. Some nights he does a pretty good job of doing it himself. He works, and he plays, and some nights his shoulder blades itch, and he tries to forget the feeling of wind of his face. It’s not every night, and he can deal with it. Because eventually the number of nights will lessen, and eventually he won’t toss and turn so much. He got out, and not everyone does, and he’s grateful.

He meets Steve Rogers, and he really should have known better because it was stupid to think that wouldn’t bring baggage of it’s own.

Steve tells him he doesn’t have to get back in, and he knows it’s the truth. He could limit his help to a roof over their heads and a place to regroup. They’d be grateful, and it would be enough at the same time that it wouldn’t. It’s the closest he’s been since he got back from his second tour, and it’s bigger than anything he’s ever done before. It probably should send him running in the opposite direction, but maybe it’s just been a little too long since he’s run headfirst into a bad decision.

Besides, they get him his wings back, and it feels like a relief. Like he’s already flying.

Maybe it’s a thin line of semantics between hero and fugitive, and Sam knows he doesn’t have as much clout as the others if they get caught. But that’s not what this is about, and he can’t really bring himself to worry. There isn’t enough time, and even if there was it wouldn’t matter. It’s too big not to help with.

Even if an underground bunker filled with spies is a little deeper than he thought he’d get.

He tells the truth; he’s a soldier, not a spy, and he gets through things a lot slower than Captain America. But that’s okay, because backing people up isn’t about matching them. And he could help hunt down the roots of Hydra, fight for his country the way he has before. But, even if he missed parts of it, that’s not him. He’s the guy who works at the VA, and who’s not as good at taking orders as he used to be. And he sees Steve getting ready to march down the trail after the Winter Soldier by himself, and that? That’s somewhere he can really help.


	3. Steve Rogers

It might be poetic, Steve thinks, that this time he’s the one falling while Bucky watches.

Then a wave from an explosion slams him into the water and it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s the moment he’s been waiting for since he told Hill to take the Helicarriers down. It not a hard decision; pain lancing through him with every movement, every breath. He can see the blood staining his suit. The war had showed him all the ways that a bullet to the stomach could lead to a messy end, and maybe with the serum he can survive it, but it’d take him too long to get off the carrier. Too much time for Hydra to regain control, especially when all they need is one. No one in the position to stop them, not with Sam grounded and Natasha and Fury busy elsewhere. And it _fits_ , finishing the crash he’d started in 1943.

Then he looks down and sees Bucky trapped, an unfamiliar snarl on his face, and that’s the tipping point. He can take himself down, but he’s not letting Bucky fall again, not on his watch, not when there’s a way for him to stop it. That makes everything simple somehow. He can work past the pain to get down, to get Bucky out. And when Bucky strikes forward it’s a relief.

There aren’t thousands of lives in the balance anymore. Steve doesn’t have to fight back.

So he falls and for a second it feels like floating, before he hits the water.

He blinks awake to a steady beeping, and it’s another relief when he opens his eyes and it’s still the same century. When Sam’s sitting at his bedside looking the same, and when he realises he can feel the wounds muffled by painkillers and he knows he can’t have been asleep that long.

They’d assumed he got to the bank of the river himself before collapsing. Steve thinks of Bucky watching him fall and smiles.

There’s a myriad of things to do in the ruins of SHIELD. Because, really, they’ve only brought down one part of it. There will be foxholes, and safe houses, and the Triskelion may have been the headquarters but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other places to default to. But for now those jobs are for everyone else; Steve’s not going to do a single one. After all, charging after Bucky Barnes without any preparation is what he does best.


	4. Bucky

The target called him Bucky.

The picture of the target kept fizzing in his head, and he knew the name Captain America, knew the details of the files he’d been given with the mission. But there was something else, a line he can’t get past that feels familiar and frustrating. He doesn’t want to reach for it too hard, he can hear the words ‘wipe him’ echoing through his head, stretching back as far as he can remember. It shouldn’t matter anymore, because the base was the first place he went after strapping up his shoulder. He’d watched from a distance as people fled, carrying files and barely looking at each other. He watched until everyone was gone, and then directed all the anger he hadn’t been able to take out on Steve Rogers on the machine inside. He set off the self destruct before he left, and walked away running through the license plates and faces of everyone he’d seen leave. He watched the explosion from close enough that he could feel the heat on his face, and it was sloppy, and it didn’t help as much as it should. He was tired. Now he’s just angry.

But there are things to do before revenge.

He wears stolen clothes with a baseball cap pulled low as he slips into the Smithsonian on the tail end of a group of tourists. The cameras are easy to avoid, and he keeps his gait relaxed as he strolls into the exhibition. It works until he has to stop and stare at a painted mural of his own face staring back at him. It’s not right, it doesn’t feel right, and suddenly he has to brace himself for every step. The name Bucky hadn’t felt like his, and neither does James Buchanan Barnes, but he goes through the whole exhibit slowly and methodically. Until there’s nowhere else to turn.

The echo of ‘wipe him’ in his head gets eclipsed by ‘the only Howling Commando to give his life.’ He’s always known he’s a dead man, but it’s different knowing who.

The targets face gets splashed over every front page, only it’s not the target anymore. There’s no mission anymore. It’s Steve Rogers. It doesn’t mean much yet, but when he looks at the pictures it feels like some of the white noise in his head goes away. For now that’s enough.


End file.
